


Explosions in the Sky

by alphaenterprise



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Ghost Drifting, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slash, chaleigh, still bonding over giant robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-26 17:33:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1696610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphaenterprise/pseuds/alphaenterprise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He too is metal and flesh, crafted of the Alaskan ice and infinite stars, and blooms warmth when dragged in and out of the drift that tastes like repentance and smells like sunlight, clean and true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Explosions in the Sky

Chuck finds Raleigh stuck in the right pilot's side of the conn pod, shoulders lax and breathing ragged. Gipsy Danger had crawled back into her hangar some time ago, battered and dripping diluted blue Kaiju blood on her ascent into the Shatterdome. Her left side was mangled, shredded as if run through a blender, and the hand on the same side was missing three fingers that skittered with sparks from the ruined circuits and wires. Yancy had been removed by the med team, bleeding from his nose and unresponsive, and Raleigh had only been left hooked up to the jaeger on Pentecost’s strictest orders.

 

A synthetic left hemisphere had been induced into the system while Yancy's mind had been weaned away in the same moments that the weapons and movement processes had been taken offline to avoid pushing the edges of the almost impossibly strong drift that Raleigh was stuck in. The conn pod bathes the white of the American’s drivesuit with yellow-orange light from the hexagonal HUD, and Chuck is careful to keep his tread even as he enters.

 

Raleigh is still hooked to Gipsy Danger when Chuck pads his way into the conn and is as limp as Yancy was when he was wheeled away. His inhales are slow and almost painfully labored and match his exhales in beat and timing in a strange, perfect synchronity that it is in itself unnerving. He is stock still, the rigidity of his drivesuit hiding the rise and fall of his chest, and looks almost unconsciously slumped.

 

"Oi." Chuck tries, and he keeps his tone as unassuming as he can make it. It is not in him to be gentle, but he figures that he owes it to Raleigh, to their shaky, fledgling camaraderie, to attempt to be the ground wire this time. "Becket." He will vehemently deny that he rushed up the stairs instead of taking the crowded lift to the jaeger's bay, will glare and glare and glare if accused of taking the steps two or three at a time, and Max will look at him with his doleful eyes and will know the truth.

 

Raleigh looks at him then, a lethargic turn of his head, and his face is pallid in the glow of the helmet of his drivesuit. His mouth moves, slowly and as if to form words, but all Chuck can hear is a breathy, heavy exhale. A tiny cut mars his cheek, gained perhaps when they were jostled and the control module that he clutches in his fist every time that he sinks into the drift came too close with its edges, but it bleeds just enough to be red against his skin.

 

"Does it hurt?" Chuck queries, calling back his own fragmented memories of his ghost drift and Raleigh's questions to him. He steps into the conn further, careful to avoid Yancy's first-pilot rigging at the hitch in breath that follows and instead leans against the manual controls that are centered between the first and second pilot rigs. "Your left arm?"

 

There is a furrowing in Raleigh's brow and it is honest confusion that scrawls across his expression. He brings his left arm up, clenching and unclenching his fist in curious wonder, and does not seem to register that the circuitry suit had heated up and sparked so much that it had singed through the fingertips of the soft underlayer of his drivesuit. There is no blood, no obvious scrapes or bruises, but Chuck can see the light scarring left by the circuitry suit that only grows dark with repeated piloting excursions.

 

"No pain." Raleigh shrugs, touching his fingertips to his thumb slowly before repeating the action quicker and quicker, and the HUD lights up with neural firings registered by the spinal column of the drivesuit. The placebo hemisphere blazes purple and the tickticktick of his drivesuit's metal fingers impacting the equally metal palm reverberates and echoes in the conn until it is almost overwhelming. "Cold."

 

He exhales, slow and heavy, the sound pulsating in tandem with the slow beep of a heartbeat monitor that rings, first from the right pons, and then coalesces into a thrumming that filters through Chuck's skin. The drift is so strong, Chuck realizes with a modicum of wonder, that Gipsy Danger is responding as if the first-pilot simulator was absent the entire time, and that Raleigh's mind was in such a ragged state that his memories were pushing the systems to and fro in nearly violent waves. Raleigh's heartbeat thumps under his bones, beneath his feet, and rattles the floor. It is consuming like wildfire and Chuck's teeth jar just a little as the sound burrows in his chest unbidden.

 

"Cold." the blonde repeats hoarsely, and his voice fades out before he can pronounce the 'd' with a rasp; he wraps his lips around the 'co' and finishes the motion of speaking the word, but it drowns out with the thud-thud-thud of his heart and the hissing of bloodflow that slinks about the conn pod. "Everything is cold. Everything is ice."

 

Dimly, Chuck tries to remember what Raleigh's files say about the general background provided by the defense corps that is available to the other rangers. He knows that they came from Alaska, born and returned after travelling about with one parent from France and the other from... America, perhaps, maybe Germany, but he knows that Raleigh joined up with his brother attached at his hip at the anchorage Shatterdome somewhere around twenty-eighteen or twenty-nineteen. He knows vaguely that they are listed as each other's next of kin, the only names scrawled in surprisingly neat penmanship on the printed, thin lines, and that there are three people in their files with the last name Becket that have parentheses and deceased inked beside the typewriter font.

 

"Raleigh." He tries again, and there must be something in his voice that makes Raleigh jerk to attention and turns his head so that they're meeting eyes. "You're okay, mate." Raleigh’s jaw slackens, mouth opening for a scant moment, before his lips purse as if to speak. The sound of his fingers tapping has faded, stopped in favor of pressing gloved palms to his thighs, and Raleigh's composure returns as quickly as a ship sinks.

 

Raleigh breathes in and sighs, shoulders sagging and lips pressing thinly together. "It's cold." He insists with a growing, unsettling feeling of confusion settling in Chuck's stomach. "It's cold." The tone of his voice is plaintive, heavy with stories and unspoken truths, and Chuck is given the distinct impression of a clinical coldness rather than snow and meltwater.

 

There is some significance that Chuck knows that he isn't catching, wishes Yancy wasn't crammed up in the medical wing because a thread of 'what if Raleigh is fucked up forever after this' winds in his consciousness. So instead, he eyes the first pilot rigging with a measure of apprehension and a stubborn, determined set to his jaw. he's only familiar with striker's schematics, how to run the softwares by pulling panels off of where they belong, and feels like he's blindly stepping off of a cliff face as he tugs the helm attachment down after disengaging the locks on it. The entire drift sequence isn't something that he needs to initiate, he thinks while experimentally caging his head with the arms that were made to hook into the drivesuit helmets, because he doesn't need to be sucked into a ghost drift with Raleigh, because he doesn't need to do anything more but be a pillar and hold tight to the other pilot's consciousness.

 

The rigging abruptly goes rigid and the pistons on the side of the main arm hiss as it is quickly retracted into its usual position, right out of Chuck's hands without any sort of preamble. He scowls, one part surprise and the rest disbelief, and Raleigh's head tilts slowly to the side as he observes. He's quiet, jaw set neutrally and eyebrows furrowed just so, and his posture loosens the smallest bit until his spine is, strangely, relaxed. The slope of his shoulders is unhindered, sagging as if put upon and calm at the same time, and Chuck jerks when a heavy, erratic heartbeat consumes the conn pod instead.

 

"Mate, if that's you, then - "

 

"It isn't." Raleigh interrupts him, quiet and scratchy and Chuck is impressed with himself for being able to decipher the words, and the upwards tug of his lips is self-depreciating at best. His eyes are miles away, tinged orange and towering in the same moments that he is human and small, and there is a sudden regality and composure to the blonde pilot that makes Chuck's head spin.

 

There is an extended beat, eaten with the same thumping and underlain with a beep that is familiar but unplaceable, and Raleigh makes unabashed eye contact with Chuck when he speaks again. "It was my mother's." he explains, clenches his fists and taps his fingers to each other, and exhales in a moment of clarity. The HUD flickers gently, slowly, and Chuck sees the change in the projection of the hemisphere moderation unit; only the right hemisphere was lit up and active, and his stomach drops when he realizes that it meant that Raleigh was drifting by himself.

 

"It was hers." Raleigh continues, and the beat, beat, beat fades in and out until the beeping drones and Chuck's mind supplies that it was the sound of a heart monitor flatlining. The Australian is floored when the struts of the second pilot rigging begin to disengage and the conn pod remains alight with the orange of the visor, the yellow dots that line Raleigh's suit, and the blue-white of the fluorescent bulbs that are mounted on the pilot rigs. "Mom's, I mean." he stumbles gracefully when he steps down from the footholds and the disorientation is visible in how he moves slowly and stares too long at things, but Chuck throws an arm around Raleigh's shoulders when he sways and holds tight with his other hand.

 

"Sorry." is all he can say, unused to offering comfort and unsure of how the condolence would be received, and Raleigh shrugs in an abortive motion that says everything that he does not. "My mum's gone too." Chuck blurts before thinking otherwise, head ducked similarly to Raleigh's, and it feels like he's sharing secrets that he never intended to.

 

Raleigh studies him, steadying himself and reaching up to lethargically unclasp and drop his helmet with a heavy breath inwards and a muted, solid clang as the piece of armor hits the floor. It seems to fortify him, puff him up from the inside like a balloon, and his presence becomes more substantial, even though his back remains slumped. the raised logo on Raleigh's shoulder digs uncomfortably into Chuck's underarm and ribs, scuffed and thankfully worn at the edges, and Chuck stills when Raleigh begins to pull away.

 

"Watch yerself." Chuck begins, and before he's done with the sentence, a warm hand, devoid of the gloves that the pilots wear for increased neural feedback, comes up to cup 'round the back of his neck and provide the gentlest of pushes. Raleigh's forehead then rests flat against his own, heedless of the invasion of space, and something buried deep in Chuck's chest mutters about the faint freckles on Raleigh's cheekbones that would become more pronounced if he were in the sun and the blonde-brown of his eyelashes, almost countable with the proximity that they're in.

 

"Alright." Raleigh agrees easily, does something with his hand that Chuck cannot see but suspects that it is a swiping motion towards the HUD, and rests it tiredly over the Aussie's shoulders while dragging his forehead away. Instead, he repositions to Chuck's shoulder, nose and eyes shielded by Chuck's faded, soft tee. "Alright." his eyes close, slow and smooth and without any of the fleeting, jittery fear from earlier, but there is a weariness in his bones that does not abate and instead seems to drag across Chuck's skin like a physical thing. He moves like an arthritic person, aged too much too young with a cold that seeps into his being, and it taps a well of emotion that is so suddenly caged behind Chuck's sternum that it takes his breath away.

 

Chuck turns his face slowly, drags his lips across Raleigh's hair and cheek and temple until he bleeds warmth to chase the brittle cold of Alaskan frontiers away from Raleigh's skin. He doesn't kiss per se, but his mouth is parted and there is a reddening trail that follows where their skin met. Eventually, it blooms into a full-fledged blush, darkens Raleigh's freckles and creeps down his neck, and his heartbeat quickens just as there is another one that slowly creeps into the drift as a background sound, white noise that is soothing and brings with it one word: 'Yancy'.

 

A sigh leaves Raleigh's chest, quiet and content, and he leans closer to give Chuck a lazy kiss that is more of him pressing some part of their mouths together and mushing their noses close until, respectively, their faces are nestled in a way that has the opposite eye resting, closed, on the bridge between eyebrows. Chuck breathes in and chases the sterile antiseptic of hospitals and unforgiving loss with sun and burning warmth, and Raleigh breathes out and pushes away the rawness in Chuck's heart with evergreens and auroras and the smiles that tug their mouths upwards make the kissing even more strange, but it is comfortable in its own way and that is more than alright.

**Author's Note:**

> a second part that i’ve intermittently worked on throughout the semester and finally got off my ass to finish, brought to life by a comment left on this story’s precursor, this explores raleigh’s ghost drifting, a touch of (barely hinted) sentient jaegers, and pushed on by a dream i had of the beeping of a heartbeat monitor.
> 
> crossposted to my tumblr! (alphajaeger)


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